Postdoctorate – Mobilization plan

The aim of the project is to create a web-based documentary film education program consisting of four documentary films and their accompanying texts, which will be featured on the Tënk Canada subscription video catalog. Tënk offers a catalog of documentary films on the web. This is the only French-language subscription video catalog dedicated entirely to documentaries in Quebec. Four short audiovisual capsules will be produced to introduce and accompany the films, moving away from a text-centric approach and facilitating understanding of a handful of introductory works. The course is aimed primarily at the people targeted by the catalog, notably college students and graduates in communications and media creation. This audience has been specifically targeted because a significant proportion of their film consumption is already online, and conversely, this age group is the least likely to have been in contact with traditional cinema cultural mediation.

The project aims to improve access and visibility for Quebec documentaries online. It also aims to strengthen the ability of young Quebecers to receive documentary films. The aim is to provide an introduction to documentary cinema and its role in Quebec culture and society. Introducing young audiences to the audiovisual forms of documentary should also enable them to take a critical look at other cultural forms, particularly those broadcast by television or on social media.

Transmediality

Mapping transmedia scripting in documentaries. A project focusing on the study of audiovisual writing of the real, as part of the Savoir CRSH research project Raconter-Cartographier. La scénarisation transmédiale (Isabelle Raynauld, principal investigator, 2019-2023).

With Viva Paci and Dishani Samarasinghe, preparation and production of a series of interviews with practitioners (2019-2023).

Research-creation

Les “dames pensionnaires” des hospices religieux québécois, 1690-1975. This web documentary, currently in production, is based on previous research conducted under the direction of Professor Aline Charles. It will provide an in-depth look at the stories of these elderly women, the forerunners of today’s retirement home residents. Animated archives, video sequences, old photos, soundtracks, interactive maps and engaging narratives will shed light on their arrival at the hospice, the fees they paid, the tasks they assumed, the family relationships they kept or lost, the housing, food and care conditions they negotiated or endured, the means they took to ensure a “good death”. Their individual journeys will be placed in their material, social, legal and spiritual context. The result will be an extensive portrait of this unique practice, which endured for three centuries without ever leaving its mark on the Quebecois imagination.

This research-creation project brings together a multidisciplinary team of historians and webdocumentary specialists, as well as history and communication students.

Partnership research

Canadian documentary film education program. The first milestone in a research partnership between UQAM’s labdoc and Tënk Canada, this project aims to create a web-based pathway for didactics and education in documentary filmmaking. Film education is relatively underdeveloped in Canada. In Quebec, it occupies a marginal place in the school curriculum. This absence is all the more problematic as more and more people are accessing films directly via online offerings (Netflix et al.). The major streaming players are taking advantage of audiences’ knowledge of and desire for cinema, without actually contributing to foster them. […]

Project funded by a SSHRC Partnership Engage Grant (2023-2024), under the direction of Viva Paci and in collaboration with Rémy Besson.

Completed projects :

Postdoctorate (2021-2024)

The desire to automate the distribution of cinema is an integral part of its history. As early as the first decades of the 20th century, the term “automatic cinema” can be found in patents describing cinematographic machines. It is associated with the description of filming equipment, but also with the low-cost distribution of advertising films in public places.

Two key moments are examined: the period of institutionalization of cinema at the turn of the century, and the advent of television in the forties and fifties. Both constitute moments of intense discursive production around the generalization of the projection of moving photographic images and the development of electronic devices respectively. The discourses and imaginaries surrounding the technologies for automating the projection and distribution of cinema help to put contemporary offers of online cinema viewing into perspective, particularly those proposed by subscription video services. This research provides an initial mapping of the existence and strength, throughout the history of cinema, of discourses promoting the adoption (real or imagined) of automation technologies.

Research funded by two FRQSC grants and conducted within the Department of Communication and Art History, McGill University (2021-2024).

Les infirmières de la folieA web documentary produced as part of the project Des institutions et des femmes. Évolution du nursing psychiatrique au Québec (Marie-Claude Thifault (dir.), CIHR, 2015-2021)
This web documentary is based on a historical investigation into three major psychiatric institutions in Quebec: Hôpital Saint-Michel-Archange, Hôpital Saint-Jean-de-Dieu and Institut Albert-Prévost. It highlights the role of women in the management of these institutions throughout the 20th century, and in the establishment of the first training courses in psychiatric care.

Co-design and launch of the webdoc.

Intimités à l’épreuve du numérique, Diane Poitras (ed.), GRISQ, UQAM, 2017-…
This creative research questions the place and meaning of intimacy in the “all-digital” society. It includes films by Marjolaine Béland, Andrea Cooper, Bàlint Demers, Anne-Gabrielle Harpin, Andréanne Martin, Fanie Pelletier, Diane Poitras, Rui Silveira. A study day was held in June 2021 and an exhibition in autumn 2023.

With Joëlle Gélinas, research and writing of accompanying texts.

Transmédialité : dissolution des frontières disciplinaires et médiatiques dans les objets culturels et les espaces narratifs contemporains.

Research assistant and co-applicant on a SSHRC Knowledge Development application. Évelyne Deprêtre (principal investigator), TELUQ University, 2020-2021.

Research Assistant, TELUQ University

  • Research program: Représentation médiatique des personnes assistées sociales au Québec, Normand Landry (dir.), Canada Research Chair in Media Education and Human Rights, 2020

Research Assistant, CRICIS, GRISQ and labdoc, UQAM

  • Help with the preparation and writing of the SSHRC Insight grant, Algorithmisation et automatisation de la création et diffusion des messages politiques en contexte canadien, André Mondoux (dir.), GRISQ, UQAM, 2020
  • Help with the preparation and writing of the major modification to the Bachelor of Communication (Digital Media), 2019
  • Participation in the design and online publishing of the webdocumentary Sur les soins (SSHRC, connection program, 2018-2019), Chair in Politics, Knowledge and Health (Pocosa), Université de Montréal, 2018-2019
  • Help with the preparation and writing of the FRQSC grant – Soutien aux équipes, Intelligence artificielle : gouvernementalité et algorithmisation des discours politiques sur les plateformes socionumériques, André Mondoux (dir.), GRISQ, UQAM, 2018
  • Help with the preparation and writing of a SSHRC Insight development grant, Diane Poitras (dir.), GRISQ, UQAM, 2017 and 2018
  • Research program: the governance of communication systems, Éric George (dir.), CRICIS, 2010-2105

Research assistant, GRAFICS, Université de Montréal

  • Research program: Histoire du montage à l’aune des mutations technologiques du cinéma : pratiques, esthétiques, discours, André Gaudreault (dir.), 2013-2018

Research Assistant, EDM, UQAM

  • Les nouveaux modes de distribution cinématographiques et télévisuels, Marc Ménard (dir.), 2013-2014
  • Up the High Line. New York through the eyes of cinema, Viva Paci (dir.), 2012-2014
  • Constructions documentaires: de la conférence illustrée au Web-documentaire, Viva Paci (dir.), 2013-2014
  • Cinema and television: stories of a complex relationshipViva Paci (dir.), 2010-2013